Efficiency analysis and Ranking of Mediterranean container Ports and terminals

Abstract

The Mediterranean Sea is the ‘crossroads’ of European, Asian and African continents whose trade is growing with globalisation. And as a ‘maritime route’ nearly a third of world trade ‘passes’, from the mouth of the Suez Canal to the Straits of Gibraltar or the Bosporus, from the Atlantic to the Black Sea making the region as one of the world’s major trade routes in addition of the trade developed by the coastal countries situated around this landlocked sea.

For long time transport in the region has been dominated by the North-West European ports but during the last decade there is a consistent progress in ports situated on the south and east shores of the Mediterranean basin, notably Morocco, with the Tangier Med container transshipment terminals project, and also in Egypt, which has recently started the expertise of the private sector in delivering new capacity and new efficiencies. This changing environment has consistently scrambled up ports hierarchy in the region.

In this paper the efficiency and performance is evaluated for 32 seaports in the Mediterranean region using a non-parametric linear programming method, DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) which evaluates relative efficiencies of a homogenous set of decision making units (DMUs) in the presence of multiple input and output factors.

Studies on the region using DEA never included the new emerging ports and terminal thus the ultimate goal of the study is to re-estimate the competitive environment of port industry in the region including ports from all Mediterranean sub-regions to fully assess ports’ activity in the region. By analyzing the operational efficiency, revealing the causes of inefficient operations, and suggesting how to overcome the drawbacks. An additional analysis for ranking the container ports was conducted using the super-efficiency model.